Nick Clegg's keynote conference speech made a theme of "liberal justice" – he staunchly defended the Human Rights Act and extolled restorative justice in the aftermath of riots. The Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister also made a string of announcements from consumer rights and ending child detention to promising equal rights on gay marriage, social mobility and better access to education and opportunities. This will impress those with liberal values and is great news for social justice.

But there is still one major area of contention: the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill, which is careering through parliament with few political heavyweights questioning whether it is the right time to dismantle the system. Legal services advising the poorest on employment rights, debt problems, welfare benefit law issues, immigration problems, medical malpractice, tenancy issues, or family and relationship breakdown/divorce will be abolished under the bill. No one will be able to get legal aid advice on these issues, except under the most extreme circumstances such as domestic violence or forced eviction.

Criminal legal aid remains mostly untouched by the bill, although it does include a worrying provision that could restrict access to advice in police custody and limit advice on civil and family issues.

This policy decision sits oddly with the prime minister's pledge to support legal advice agencies.

Recent Lib Dem conferences have passed motions supporting civil legal aid, equality before the law and access to justice. And this week in Birmingham was no different – it passed an amendment to a motion on welfare reform which insists that appellants on benefit appeals should get legal aid, and called on the government to reverse the exclusion of welfare benefits law from legal aid, which has been written into the bill.

At one fringe meeting, the justice minister, Lord McNally, acknowledged that many Liberal Democrats were unhappy with the policy behind the legal aid bill, but he defended the policy by claiming the cuts had been forced on the Ministry of Justice by the economic situation and reduction of its budget. He likened the ministry's situation to that of a cash-strapped council having to close a popular children's play centre. He also dismissed the notion of conference votes having any bearing on coalition policy, saying it was "a Saturday morning resolution, which cannot mean that parliamentarians have to follow it".

At another fringe meeting, this time organised by a group of lawyers, Tom Brake MP, the party's justice lead in the Commons, was questioned about the accountability of the frontbench on legal aid policy. He observed that cuts were not in the coalition agreement, so the issues had to be negotiated, and the package was inevitably a compromise between two parties made in difficult financial circumstances.

While he assured the audience he understood their objections to the bill, he said his room for manoeuvre in changing the legislation was limited, given ministers had not been convinced by any of the alternative ways of reducing legal aid spending put to them during the consultation stage.

This led to a heated discussion on the moral hazards of politicians choosing whose rights should be prioritised by the shrinking legal aid budget – victims of medical negligence, domestic violence, harassed tenants or disabled peoples' welfare rights? Of course, the result of competing claims deserving both justice and funding is that no one comes out winning.

Legal aid has always received support from across the political spectrum, but now it is as if a solar eclipse has been cast across the debate about what is required for fair and decent standards of access to justice. With little sign of even small concessions, let alone a significant rethink on the measures in the legal aid bill, these are dark days for legal aid and for those who rely on it. And the contrast with the sunny, optimistic vision of liberal justice could not be greater.

James Sandbach is social policy officer at the Citizens Advice Bureau and a member of the Justice4All coalition